In London, we still worship fire

After the Jubilee concerts, the Royalists took great comfort in the huge turn out - "people have come out in their thousands; it proves how much the British people love their Royal Family", they concluded. So what do we make of the enormous numbers who thronged the Mall for the pop concert to mark, erm, the Olympic Torch being rushed by on its way to Greece: that, despite a few flirtations with battery torches and camping gas stoves, the Brits still have a deep-seated affection for, and fascination with, fire?

The event itself was as awful as you might expect - Rachel Stevens' Some Girls is a great pop single (not as great as her last one, but it's still fine), but she came on looking like she'd decided to have an extra hour in bed instead of getting her hair done, and the camera work was dreadful. She was being backed, it seemed, by a Tribute To the Dove Soap Advert, and when they tried to do an Indian goddess style big finish, instead of getting the effect, the camera was on their side, so it looked more like a nasty spillage outside a prosthetic factory.

Worse was to come, though, as the big finish was Rod Stewart and either it was the cast of Tonight's The Night (the piss-poor Ben Elton scripted Stewart musical), or else a hen party organiser with a charge card from Ann Summers had wandered on stage. Nothing wrong with Rod, of course, except when he decides to do something from his songbook that even 80s era Eton John would have sent back as too cheesey. He kicks in. It's Sailing. Why? Why? Although they do have sailing in the Olympics, maybe that was the thinking behind it? Come to that, why was Rod the best they could find? Admittedly, Macca's tied up down Somerset doing his Glasto thing, but surely they could have found someone more... enticing? (Maybe Elton?) If this was meant to be part of the attempt to drag the Olympics to London in 2012, those of us who think trying to attract a cash-guzzling security and logistical nightmare to the UK capital need not worry - in a head to head with Paris, being noted as the country which can just about scrape together Ozzy Osbourne and Rod Stewart and call it a party is going to make France a shoo-in.

Article Author: Simon B

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